A Pregnant Woman With Parking Violations Was Arrested And Put In Jail During The Coronavirus Pandemic

Diamond Davis is a Montgomery, AL-based woman who is pregnant and currently dealing with criminal charges.

On April 19, the pregnant mother-to-be was arrested and detained overnight in a prison currently battling coronavirus cases. Davis had been brought to the prison after police officers had arrested her for failing to show up for court hearings about her traffic-related violations. There were other similar charges that led to her arrest and jail detainment which a judge dismissed her from, via teleconference, after assigning her a new court date which will open up a new discussion on how she will repay the fines she owes.

While traffic-related violations are important to pay attention to, Davis’s arrest and time in prison is raising concerns among advocates calling for a chance in the climb in numbers of pregnant women “who have been put at a greater risk of contracting COVID-19 because of non-violent charges by a prison system being accused of not doing enough to protect those it incarcerates,” according to Refinery29.

According to The New York Times, Davis’ car was pulled over when police noticed that her temporary license plates had expired. After the officers stopped her they found that the 27-year-old mother-to-be was driving without a license and without car insurance. They also discovered that she had overdue court fines.

David was taken to Montgomery City Jail and told NYT that her request for a mask and gloves had been denied. She also claims that there was no hot water available for her to wash her hands.

What’s worse, one of the two women she had been made to share a cell with was coughing.

Soon after Davis’s release from the Montgomery City Jail, police reported five positive coronavirus cases.

While the cases were reported amongst the jail’s federal incarcerated community, which is reportedly kept in a separate area from people incarcerated by the city– like Davis– five cases were also reported among the jail’s nurses and correctional officers. According to NYT, “The number of positive cases has since risen to 21, Michael Briddell, the director of public information for Montgomery, said Wednesday.”

Michael Briddell, the director of public information for Montgomery, explained in an interview with NYT that early on in the pandemic, “the city took steps to release nearly all nonviolent offenders, adding that the jail held 93 detainees in the last week of April, compared with 115 detainees during the same period a year ago.” According to Briddel “only the most extreme nonviolent cases are being held,” and Davis fell under this category because she had 16 outstanding warrants.

Meanwhile, Claudia Wilner, who is the director of litigation for the National Center for Law and Economic Justice, which fights for economic justice for low-income people, “overpolicing of black communities had led to the constant issuing of tickets for traffic violations.” The underlying implication? Injustices in our criminal system are bringing people into places where they could potentially face death. Is it worth it?

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Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo Are The Women Fighting To Find The Stolen Children During The Argentine Dictatorship

During the 1970s a group of desperate Argentinian mothers began protesting government officials and holding them accountable for the human rights violations that had been committed in the military junta known as the Dirty War. The determined women violated the government’s law against mass assembly and risked the ire of Argentina’s military dictatorship to expose the government’s human rights violations. The biggest part of their fight however had been to expose the kidnapping of over 30,000 individuals known today as “Desaparecidos” or “the disappeared.”

The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo (or, the Asociación Madres de Plaza de Mayo) is a movement of Argentine mothers who campaigned to find out what happened to their children who had “disappeared” during the 1976 government takeover.

The mothers’ tragic stories began in 1976. At the time the Argentine military had toppled the presidency of Isabel Perón. According to History.com, “it was part of a larger series of political coups called Operation Condor, a campaign sponsored and supported by the United States.” The new military dictatorship resulted in the Dirty War, which was ultimately a fight against the Argentinian people. It opened doors to a period of state-sponsored torture and terrorism and saw the government turn against Argentina’s citizens, targeting those suspected of being aligned with leftist, socialist or social justice. As part of the rule of terror, the government kidnapped and killed an estimated 30,000 people. They also made great efforts to cover up the dead and missing people.

But the family members and friends of the missing victims fought for the truth.

The mothers and relatives of people who went missing during the war searched for their loved ones and began to stage protests at the Plaza de Mayo in the 1980s.

According to History.com “Some of the mothers of the disappeared were grandmothers who had seen their daughters whisked away and presumably killed and their grandchildren given away to other families. Even after the Dirty War ended in 1983, the Grandmothers of the Plaza Mayo have searched for answers and worked to identify children who grew up without any knowledge of their true parents.”

The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo is a 1985 Argentine documentary film that highlights the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo.

At the time of its release, it was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature and in 2013, received an update on “Abuelas: Grandmothers on a Mission” which highlights the work of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina.

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For the first three minutes of being restrained Floyd (a 46-year-old Black man) pled for his life begging Chauvin to remove his knee because he couldn’t breathe. After four minutes Floyd stopped moving, and bystanders capturing video of the request determined that he was unresponsive. The aftermath of his death after sparked explosive protests and reminders, yet again, that Black people are not safe in this country and continue to. be subjected to inequality.

On Tuesday morning, video of the incident that took place on a sidewalk in Minneapolis surfaced online fueling anger and protests.

There’s so much in the video that is distressing, but hearing Floyd begging the officer to let up and repeating “I can’t breathe” is only a small part that has once fueled the Black Lives Matter movement. After all, we’ve heard those words before. In 2014, Eric Garner, uttered the same ones while dying under police brutality in New York.

At the time of his death, Floyd had been facing arrest. The officers involved in the incident had been called to the scene due to a “forgery in progress” in the Powderhorn Park neighborhood of Minneapolis. Note, forgery while a serious crime is a non-violent one.

Darnella Frazier is the woman who captured the video on her phone and posted the footage on Facebook for the world to see.

On Tuesday, May 26, Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo announced that the officers involved had been placed on leave. Later on in the day, four responding officers were fired and the Federal Bureau of Investigation announced the incident was being reviewed.

Reactions to the protests show another glaring reminder of the treatment of Black people in the United States vs. white.

I don't remember seeing tear gas when the lockdown protesters came to govt buildings with rifles and shoving cops around https://t.co/e8KEPRCTu8

Reactions to anti-mask protests and demonstrations against government stay-at-home orders in the past few weeks have been met with stoic reactions.

You’ve seen the images. In the face of demonstrators furious about the safety restrictions implemented to combat COVID-19, police officers and government officials have responded primarily with nonviolence. We’ve seen no stun grenades or tear gas.